The user set selection algorithm
When we go advertising on Facebook Ads or other social networks, the platform gives us the ability to create our campaigns based on specific goals, andthey are critical to aligning Facebook Ads performance with our business goals.
Selecting the correct campaign target, allows us to reach a target audience more likely to take certain actions and consequently not waste advertising budget.
In fact, in the millions of users we have the opportunity to reach with our ads, Facebook, depending on the selected target, will go and choose sets of people based on their behavior habits.
For example, if I select “Sales” as the campaign objective, the algorithm will favor people who are in the habit of buying online, especially those who buy online after seeing an ad on Facebook and Instagram.
If, on the other hand, I choose “Interactions” as my goal, the algorithm will favor people who are more likely to leave alike, leave a comment, watch a video in its entirety, or perhaps send us a message.
In summary, the goals serve to help the algorithm select the right people, optimize ad delivery, test different audiences, and avoid wasting advertising budget unnecessarily.
Macro objectives
Goals are selectable as soon as you create the campaign and currently are (currently because Facebook is constantly being updated and changed):
- Notoriety
- Weather
- Interactions
- Contact
- Promotion of the app
- Sales
Depending on our needs, so also depending on where we are in the Funnel, we can use different targets.
What Facebook advises us to do is to follow the following goals for the various stages of the funnel:
- TOFU: Notoriety
- MOFU: Traffic – Interactions
- BOFU: Contact – App Promotion – Sales
What is recommended by Facebook, however, is not always the right choice.
If we are managing e-commerce campaigns, it is advisable to select Sales also in TOFU and MOFU phase, because the algorithm will hit people more in target, although this will definitely lead to higher costs and narrower audiences (i.e., the people from TOFU who will enter MOFU and BOFU will be fewer, but on target).
If, on the other hand, you are running a local business, such as a gym or restaurant, Facebook’s recommended goals are fine. In fact, in this case the goal is to stay in the consumer’s mind as long as possible and thus appear many times in their day. By selecting lighter targets such as interactions or coverage, we will have the opportunity to appear multiple times in the user’s feed and consequently be his or her first choice when deciding which gym to join or which restaurant to book on Saturday. All this, of course, at considerably lower cost than a Sale target.
